The Nucleon's Antiquark Sea: A Virtual Meson Cloud or Gluons?
Abstract
We study the possible contribution of the nucleon's virtual meson cloud to the sea quark distribution as observed in deep inelastic lepton scattering. We adjust the meson-nucleon cut-offs to the large-x tails of the antiquark distributions, find qualitatively different behavior in the flavor singlet and non-singlet channels and study the scale dependence of our results. We demonstrate that, within convolution models, to reproduce the sea quark distribution the relevant pion momenta should be around 0.8 GeV.
Turn this paper into a full lesson
ArcXiv compiles a staged curriculum from this paper: 8-12 lessons across beginner → advanced, synthesised section guides, visuals, flashcards, a quiz, exercises, and on-demand deep dives per section. Grounded in the abstract, never invented.